A Columbia University committee conducting a review of the Ivy League school’s Middle East programs mandated by President Donald Trump includes anti-Israel faculty members who have justified Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre and defended notorious antisemites, according to reporting by The Washington Free Beacon.
Columbia has formed a seven-member committee to review its Middle East programs as part of a broader review overseen by Senior Vice Provost Miguel Urquiola.
The review is mandated under Columbia’s agreement with the federal government to restore more than $400 million in funding.
The committee includes faculty with a range of perspectives on Israel and the Middle East.
Some members, including Bruno Bosteels and Timothy Mitchell, have previously signed letters framing the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack in terms of occupied peoples’ resistance.
Critics have pointed to the Columbia faculty as a leading source of antisemitism at the university.
The Free Beacon suggested the committee’s anti-Israel makeup could put the university back in the hot seat.
Bosteels, the dean of humanities and a communism scholar, and Mitchell, a professor focused on colonialism, signed an Oct. 30, 2023, open letter arguing that student groups that justified Hamas’ attack merely aimed to “recontextualize the events of October 7, 2023.”
A university spokesperson noted that the committee serves an advisory role only, its recommendations are made collectively to the senior vice provost and are nonbinding.
The review follows ongoing disputes over Middle East programming at Columbia, which critics have cited as a source of campus tensions.
The Trump administration put Columbia on notice in early March that it faced a “comprehensive review” of more than $50 million in “federal contracts and grants in light of ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”
Days later, the administration announced the holdback of $400 million in contract funding and grants due to “the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
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